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Recycling Workshop, the latest app from Jump App, is full of colour and creativity. A great companion to its sibling apps, Puppet Workshop and Imagination Box, it is a simple to use, child-directed creativity app. Your children will be able to make endless characters using recycled containers as a base and a range of recycled items as facial features and limbs.

Using the app

My children and I found the app very easy to use. The steps are simple:

Choose a base from a variety of generic containers of different colours.

Choose features from the different menus and drag them on to your character. Scroll up and down each menu to see the many different options for each category. Some items are drawn, but many are common items you may find around the home, e.g. Buttons for eyes, plastic cutlery or straws for arms, or a twisted chenille stick for a mouth. You are not limited to making “human” characters as there are props for animal features.

Choose a background from several colours or even from your photos.

Use the simple controls to resize, flip, and rotate each item to your preference. You can also undo actions.

Simple drawing tools let you draw on the character or background, although you can’t draw over the features.

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Little Lamb in Amsterdam, by Joshua and Donna Wilson, is two stories in one: a simple story of a little lamb on her cycling adventures, and a fact book full of historical, geographical and cultural information about the Netherlands. Little Lamb has an adventurous spirit and sets off on a cycling tour of the Netherlands, finishing in Amsterdam. Along the way she sees different things including windmills, tulips and wild flowers, canals, clogs and more.

Each page is filled with a colourful, interactive illustration and a line or two of text telling the story. Tap the bottom of the screen to show extra information. Find out about the different things windmills grind when little Lamb cycles past them. If you ever wondered why the Netherlands teams wear orange, you will find that fact on the page where Little Lamb celebrates their National day. Extra information is sometimes revealed In the animations; we are treated to some works of Dutch masters such as Vermeer, Van Gogh and Rembrandt when Little Lamb visits the Museums and Galleries, and see boats passing under bridges on the canals. Sometimes Little Lamb is hidden, and finding her becomes a fun hide and seek activity. Continue reading →

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The My First App series from appp media is a great favourite with the younger children in our home. I reviewed the first app in the series, My First app Vehicles, early last year. As of yesterday, the app has been updated with a new Spot the Difference activity, a new animation, and new sounds and animations. I’m reposting the original review today with the updates marked.

Puzzles are an important part of early learning. They help children develop spacial awareness, problem-solving skills and more. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of puzzle apps in the AppStore, so it can be difficult to choose one. My First App – Vol. 1 Vehicles is a great puzzle app from appp media, the people behind Professor Kim – What’s Missing Here.MFA Vehicles offers some traditional puzzles but with some great twists that make it supportive and high interest for a range of ability levels. Thanks to Kristin Heitmann of appp media for providing me with this app for the review.

Features

Attractive collage-style graphics – 16 different illustrations are used, although there are only 8 used per activity.

Four activities: Puzzle, Matching Halves and Tilt Game and the new Spot the Difference game

Background music (Here we go ’round the mulberry bush) can be turned off.

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You may have seen virtual play house apps before where children can drag characters around different scenes and have them interact with different items. Toca Town does all of this with not just a room or a house, but a whole town. Along with different buildings, rooms and environments to explore, a bit of Toca Boca Magic has been added to create some wonderful surprises.

Settings include a grocery store, restaurant (with commercial kitchen), two different types of home with multiple rooms, a park and a police station.

Characters – When you enter most locations, you will find one or two characters, but you can add more characters to the scene. If you have other Toca Boca apps, you will have fun recognising some of the characters you have met in previous apps.

Explore – Open cupboards and fridges to see what is inside: you can take things out and put them away. Characters can eat and drink any of the food, and carry or wear any if the items you find. Change the lighting by switching lights on or off, or opening curtains and blinds.

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Adobe Voice is an app I haven’t used yet, but I can see it will be a fantastic tool for creating multimedia presentations and would be great in the school environment. Make sure you check out Leo’s first go at presenting with Adobe Voice. I’m really impressed with his efforts.

I recently played with Adobe Voice and then showed it to my Leo, who has ASD and is a year 4 pupil.

Leo used it as a tool to complete his homework on Greek myths. Together we have played with a range of digital story telling tools both app and PC based, but I am taken aback by the features of Voice. It integrates picture, voice and clip art easily to make simple narrated stories.

Leo is someone who struggles with writing and his best work is when he creates on-screen. Though for him to be truly independent he needs something that will allow him to create and build very simply through easily learned processes. Is it too much to ask that the output looks good too?

This is where Voice ticks all the boxes.

And with all this it also outputs a portable and embeddable format, it doesn’t just…